A novel method for closed-loop topology modification of helical gears using internal-meshing gear honing

The internal-meshing honing process allows excellent machining efficiency for the tooth crowning of helical gears. A gear with double-crowned tooth flanks is better than that with longitudinal-crowned tooth flanks because the tooth edge contact is prevented and the contact load distribution is improved more effectively. This study proposes a numerical approach for the closed-loop topology modification on cylindrical gears that have double-crowned and anti-twist tooth flanks for a CNC internal-meshing gear honing machine. Additional motions are added in forms of polynomials to three machine axes, including the radial feed of honing wheel, the swivel angle of honing wheel and the rotational angle of work gear. A sensitivity matrix combined with the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm is employed to obtain the polynomial coefficients of additional motions for desired tooth surfaces. The amount of crowning on the work gear tooth surface can be specified using the proposed method. The results in the presented numerical examples verify the advantages of the proposed method.